Beijing: Tourist Edition

The tour started bright and early Monday morning, we had arranged for a private driver and tour guide to take us around for the day. Take us around they did! Here are a few pictures from the day.

The first stop was the Great Wall! We went to the Mutianyu section and even my mom said she liked it, which means that it must be surreal.

The one thing I forgot in the 5 minutes I took to pack was
something warm, thankfully my mother came prepared.

The Ming Tombs were next on our list of sites to see and while it was a bit drab after the Great Wall, our guide made it more interesting than a walk in the park.

For lunch we stopped at a tourist lunch stop and had a fine mass produced Chinese meal.

From there it was off to the Olympic village to see the Water Cube and the Bird's Nest as well as the lesser know site The Dragon Hotel.

While the Olympic Village was impressive, we had other things to see, so after we had our fill we headed off once again. This time it was off to the hutongs. Hutongs are small narrow streets found in the oldest parts of Beijing, very "cultural".

For this part we went up a the Drum Tower, got a ride in a rickshaw and visited a home. If I were honest the rickshaw and the home visit were my least favorite parts of Beijing, I was(more than) a little embarrassed. I guess it was my pride as all the other rickshaws were filled with fat, old retired tourists, I had considered myself "above" them and here I was right along with them. My parents on the other hand fit in great...

From here it was off to an acrobatics show, it was interesting and some of the stuff that they did was cool. but the only thing worth taking a picture of was the sphere off death(I think that is what they call it) They had 5 motorcycles riding around in it at the same time.

That concluded our tour. I have a general dislike for tours as they often do their best to show a polished, flawless view of an area rather than the real culture(because sometimes it's messy). I would rather explore things on my own as the resulting experiences are often more memorable. But with our limited time in Beijing the tour allowed us to see most of what we had wanted to see. There, justified, I feel better already...